Google facing huge fine in Europe over favouring its digital services

European antitrust officials are preparing to hit Google with a potentially record fine by the end of August over some of the Silicon Valley giant’s search services, the New York Times has reported, although it relies on anonymous sources. “Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition chief, is in the final stages of ruling on the case, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk publicly. Any financial penalty is expected to be larger than the fine of 1.06 billion euro – at the time the highest ever – that Intel was forced to fork out for antitrust abuses in Europe in 2009.” As well as the fine, European officials could also force Google to alter how it operates in the region, and potentially elsewhere, to give rivals a greater ability to compete. The case, linked to claims that Google diverted traffic from competitors’ services to favour its own comparison shopping site, is one of three investigations that the European Union’s executive arm has opened against the search giant. The other two involve Android, the company’s mobile software, and some of Google’s advertising products. European officials claim that the company favoured many of its own digital services, including search and online maps, over those of rivals. Google has denied any wrongdoing. Read more

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Explore other Themes

IIC Regions

Opportunities to be involved

The IIC is not a commercial organisation and operates on a not for profit basis solely to enable the balanced, open dialogue that shapes the policy agenda. Membership fees and sponsorship enable us to do this. To find out more about the IIC and different membership levels and sponsorship opportunities contact enquiries[at]iicom.org

Stay up to date with the IIC

We will give you a monthly round up of up-coming events, where we’ve been as well as interviews and selected articles from InterMedia.